Mersey View

By Ruth Hamilton

At the age of 45, Lucy Henshaw has finally left home. Her decision to go has been reached neither lightly nor suddenly, since her marriage has been broken for some eighteen years. However, as the mother of twin sons and a daughter, Lucy has felt it her duty to stay as a couple in the family house she was born in near Bolton, giving her children the security she knows they need.

Now that her family is grown, content in the knowledge that she loves them, Lucy decides she is free to leave. She secretly purchases a beautiful house overlooking the Mersey, near Liverpool, and there she plans to start afresh. Within hours, she has met some characters: her new neighbour Moira, who is disabled and dying, and sees Lucy as the ideal new companion for her husband, Richard; Shirley Bishop, built like a battleship and a cleaner extraordinaire, towing her several-inches-shorter husband as a handy gardener behind her; and Dr David Vincent, who is grieving for the loss of his young son. It is soon apparent that Lucy need have no anxieties about being lonely.

It is these new friends, too, who come to Lucy’s rescue when her husband Alan, falls ill. Always a wastrel and fraudster who has tried to control her, his illness only seems to offer him another opportunity to complicate Lucy's life all over again.

Mersey View is a compelling and gritty novel set in Liverpool, and is a wonderful story, rich with warmth and humour, by a much-loved storyteller at the height of her powers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Release date: Jul 2, 2010
• ISBN: 9780330533546

Ruth Hamilton

Ruth Hamilton was the bestselling author of numerous novels, including Mulligan's Yard, The Reading Room, Mersey View, That Liverpool Girl, Lights of Liverpool, A Liverpool Song and Meet Me at the Pier Head. She became one of the north-west of England's most popular writers. She was born in Bolton, which is the setting for many of her novels, and spent most of her life in Lancashire. She also lived in Liverpool for many years, before passing away in 2016.

Book preview

I.

One

At the age of forty-five, Lucy Henshaw ran away from home. The decision to go had been reached neither lightly nor suddenly, since the urge to clear off had existed for about eighteen years, but Lucy believed in duty, so she hung in there until the time was right. It was now or never, so it was now. The millennium had happened, and a new beginning seemed appropriate.

Nevertheless, a degree of trepidation accompanied the proposed exit, since she was leaving behind roots that went deep, and she found herself hoping against hope itself that she might survive without nutrients whose values were beyond the limits of ordinary calculation.

Another difficulty was the suspicion that she might be running from, rather than towards. A new beginning? No. It was merely an ending, a cutting away of rotted flesh in an effort to save what was left of her normal, original self. She now knew where she would be living by this afternoon, and there was a vague idea of how she might occupy her new persona. Beyond that loomed a vacuum, since her children were grown. ‘Sometimes, I wonder whether you are really sane, Lucy,’ she told herself. Yet it had to be done, quickly, quietly and with as little fuss as possible.

Tallows was not just the matrimonial home; it had been in her family for four generations. ‘I was born here,’ she told a photograph of her parents. ‘You already know that, Mother, because your attendance was compulsory.’ She placed the item in a carrier bag, where it joined photos of her twin sons and her daughter. At last, the children were old enough. Would they understand? Advised by her only friend to explain to them in full every detail, Lucy had refused. She didn’t want her offspring involved in war. Because Alan would throw several fits and would take no responsibility for his wife’s behaviour. He was a ruined man, and their mother had caused all the damage. She would go softly. Since she had done most things quietly thus far, she would be acting in character; no one would be surprised by her lower-than-ever profile.

So Lucy had sent them simple messages just to say that she was leaving, and that her reasons for this were not easy to explain. They had busy lives, plenty to do, friends all over the country. They would endure the blow. These thoughts chased one another across her mind as she walked for the last time through the house she loved.

Her dolls’ house was in the attic. Lizzie had played with it too, had grown out of it, and the large, fully furnished treasure had been returned to the top storey for future generations. ‘I wish I could explain, Lizzie. But I can’t be the means of destroying the love you have for Dad.’ It would all come out eventually, and Lucy was used to waiting.

She stroked the rocking horse. Its mane, made from real horsehair, had been depleted by several children who had hung on to it, and it needed repair. But she couldn’t save these important things, because she trusted no one enough to allow the removal of mementos. ‘Sorry,’ she said to Dobbin. Dolls, teddy bears, dart-boards, story books, toy soldiers, cars and jigsaw puzzles were piled on shelves. It would all go. Once the receivers moved in, there would be nothing left. If the receivers moved in. According to Lucy’s lawyer, the house would remain Lucy’s property, but nothing in life was ever absolutely certain. ‘I couldn’t risk a removals van, because I need not to be noticed, so I have to abandon you to the winds of fate. I hope you’ll all be loved by someone.’

The estate was a large one, and its legal owner made her way towards the grounds for a final wander through her family’s domain. She looked again at her apple trees, the vegetable plot, her raspberry canes, and at the swings on which her offspring had played. Father’s rose beds remained. Lucy had tended them, sprayed them, deadheaded and cut them back. Carp in the fish pond had no idea that life was about to change. Would he feed them? Would the gardener feed them? How was the gardener to be paid?

She stood in a kitchen where she had cooked thousands of meals. The cleaner had been and gone, so it was tidy, at least. The library was the place that hurt most. All Father’s leather-bound books were here, and the only item she would manage to save was the family Bible. Still, the situation could not be helped. No matter what, she had to go, and she could take very little with her in an ordinary car.

However, there was a tenuous plan. The house, if he pushed for a settlement and won, would possibly go to auction and, in that situation, Lucy’s representative would attend. It was likely that Alan would sell the contents in an effort to bluff his way out of bankruptcy, but his bills were large. She hoped to save the building, and that had to be enough. It should be hers anyway, because she had signed nothing when loans against the house had been taken out. In the legal sense, she had little to fear.

He would win no settlement, surely? So why was her heartbeat suddenly erratic? Why were her palms so hot and moist? Did she fear the man she had married, the one she sometimes referred to as the big mistake? Alan had never been physically violent, though drink made him angry, and he was now married to whisky. He drifted from woman to woman, though each female in turn saw through him, got bored by his drinking and passed him on to the next victim. ‘Now or never,’ Lucy advised herself.

Where was the cat carrier? Where was the cat? Then the phone rang. She picked it up. ‘Hello?’ She sounded breathless, as if she had run a half-marathon. It was him. For better or worse had been mostly worse. For richer for poorer – he knew how to make a partner poor.

‘I’ll be home in about an hour,’ he said, cutting the connection before she had chance to reply. Smokey, like the carp, would have to be left to chance. Shaking from head to foot, Lucy reversed her car into the lane and drove off. Once her knees belonged to her again, she managed to control the vehicle. She was gone. She was travelling to Liverpool.

So, she left behind two sons, a daughter, a cat, and a drawer filled with unpaid bills. And a husband. He occupied the lowest place on the agenda, because he’d caused all the difficulties right from the start. In a sense, she should be blaming herself, because she’d married beneath her. Lucy had fastened herself to a man who, after landing her with three children, would spend twenty years forging signatures, remortgaging property and bleeding her dry of her inheritance. But now, the worm had turned, and she was in a new place.

‘Then why do I feel so bloody guilty?’ she asked an empty room. Her children were all in further education, they had survived, and she had done her best. It had been a waiting game, because she hadn’t wanted to ruin their lives, and so she had sat back while he had stolen her inheritance, first to start the business, then to further broader commercial interests; also to gamble, and to spend on other women.

‘Tit for tat,’ she muttered. ‘And he was so used to getting his own way, he never noticed what I was doing.’ These words were offered to a bin bag that contained a fraction of her revenge. How would he build an estate of twenty detached, exclusive, executive residences now? That was how he had advertised the project, and land in Bromley Cross hadn’t come cheap. But Lucy now held the wherewithal for bricks, timber, glazing, sand, cement, wages and other essentials in a shiny black plastic bag and in a bank account created by her friend and solicitor, Glenys Barlow. The bag was recyclable, of course. One had to do one’s bit for the planet these days. She allowed herself a wry smile.

It had taken months. Little by little, she had relieved her husband of all ‘his’ money while the purchase of the land had been negotiated, while plans had been drawn, rejected, redrawn, accepted. His fatal mistake had been the holiday he had taken in Crete with one of his women – a hairdresser from Rivington. During those fourteen days, Lucy had taken full advantage of her position as company secretary, and she had ruined him.

Over a period of years, she had learned to copy his signature and, after taking private lessons, she had conquered computers. Her lawyer held in a strongroom all evidence of Alan’s past misdemeanours. If he wanted to fight back from a legal point of view, he would be riding the wrong horse, since his wife, Louisa, once Buckley, now Henshaw, had merely retrieved money to which he had gained access fraudulently. Confident of his wife’s supposed stupidity, Alan Henshaw would not have believed her capable of doing so much harm. Furthermore, she had taken into account inflation, the current value of the money that had been bequeathed to her, and she had left him in a mess. Her children were not in a mess, as she had opened accounts that would see all three through university.

He had been mistaken, because his wife had never been stupid; she had been patient and anxious for her children. Even so, this was a big thing to have done. She looked at her watch. He would have been home for hours by now. She lifted from the refuse bag a copy of a letter printed out this morning at home. No, not home – she didn’t live there any more. He could well be reading it now. He would have kittens even before reaching the final paragraph.

Alan,

For a very long time, I sat back and watched while you stole from the joint account. I saw money disappearing from my own personal account, and landing in yours or in the company’s records. I also know that you forged my signature several times to remortgage the family home, which was left to me by my parents.

Evidence of your misdeeds is in a safe place, and my representatives know exactly what you have done over the years, so I would advise you to hang fire – go for bankruptcy and take the pain, just as I did.

Why did I wait so long? Because Paul, Mike and Lizzie deserved a chance, and they will have that chance. I have lost a house I love, have abandoned my children, and have left you all the unpaid bills. They are in your sock drawer. It’s very full, so your socks are in the dustbin.

You could never recompense me fully for the agonies I have endured for so long a period of time. Don’t bother trying to find me, because I shall make sure it all comes out if you attempt to harass me in the slightest way.

Louisa Buckley

Powerful stuff. And how she had shaken when typing it. Had she attempted to write by hand, the letter would not have been legible. It was done. It was all done, and there could be no going back.

Right. Here she sat, waiting for carpets and furniture. As she had bought from a local firm, they had agreed to deliver out of hours, and she might be semi-furnished by ten o’clock tonight. With the exception of holidays and stays in hospital, Lucy had never slept away from Tallows, that large and rather regal house built on the outskirts of Bolton by an eighteenth-century candle-maker. She had been born and raised there, had been loved by parents and grandparents, and by a wonderful sister who had died suddenly after being thrown by her pony.

So alone. In this hollow, musty house, there was just Lucy, suitcases in another room, a rickety chair, and a pile of money in a bag. The rest of her fortune was abroad somewhere. Glenys, her only friend, was in charge of all that. A marriage like Lucy’s had attracted few visitors, and she had confided in no one beyond Glenys Barlow. ‘I’m a millionaire,’ she advised the ornate marble fireplace. Yet she felt poor. The bulk of her fortune had been salted away, but Glenys trusted whoever had handled the money, and that was good enough for Lucy.

She stood up and walked round her seven-bedroom terraced mansion. It overlooked the Mersey, a solid house that was huge for one woman. But she wasn’t going to be idle. She needed just one bedroom and a tiny boxroom for an office. So there were five spares, an en suite bathroom for herself, and two further bathrooms for guests. Bed and breakfast, she had decided. Perhaps she would install a few more en suites, but that wasn’t important yet. Or she might live downstairs – there were enough rooms to create a bedroom and an office on the ground floor, plus a shower room that would take a corner bath at a push. A fresh start, people in and out of the house all the time – that was a wonderful prospect. Also, it was a beautiful house.

Its listing was Grade Two, and a planned fire escape for the rear had been approved. It was an adventure, she told herself repeatedly. How many women her age got to have a brand new experience, a fresh start? She must remain positive, needed to stop looking over her shoulder, because the bad times were gone. ‘You have moved towards something,’ she said quietly. Even softly spoken words bounced back in this hollow house. It would be all right. It had to be all right.

She didn’t know where the shops were, had no real idea of the community into which she had moved. Crosby was supposed to be posh, though she had already heard Liverpool accents thicker than her grandmother’s porridge. The few people she had dealt with had been straight and businesslike, so she wasn’t worried about living here.

It was just lonely. ‘You’re used to loneliness,’ she told an ancient, pockmarked mirror. ‘You’ve always been lonely.’ Yes, the real poverty in her life was isolation. To attempt a new start in an unfamiliar place in her fifth decade seemed a mad thing to be doing, but there was no alternative. The children might have talked her round. Especially Lizzie, who had occupied from birth the position once held by Diane, Lucy’s dead sister. While Lizzie loved her mother, she adored her dad. And Lucy almost worshipped the daughter she would miss beyond measure. A shining light at RADA, Elizabeth Henshaw was beautiful, gifted, and had a promising future in the media. Diane had been like that – singing, dancing, writing little plays. Lizzie would live the dead Diane’s dream of performing in theatre, and—

A huge van arrived from Waterloo Furnishings. For the better part of three hours, Lucy leapt from room to room while carpets and other floor coverings were laid. Upstairs was to be left for now, as most of it needed painting and decorating, so the decision was made – she would live downstairs.

At the end of it all, she threw herself into an armchair and opened a bottle of red wine. After a couple of glasses, she made a decision and picked up the phone. She had changed her mind, and she burdened Glenys with a terrible chore. The cat was to be kidnapped.

Glenys Barlow was very taken with Stoneyhurst. ‘It’s palatial,’ she declared after dumping Smokey on a brand new leather sofa. ‘All the mouldings and cornices are definitely original – just look at that fireplace! This is Georgian at its grandest. There’s a summerhouse – and have you noticed the light on the river? Oh, this is simply spectacular.’

But Lucy was too busy nursing her cat to reply. Until he settled, Smokey needed to regress and return to the cat litter of his youth. He was a Bolton cat, a Lancashire cat, and he might not understand the mewlings of foreign felines from Merseyside. Smokey, a pedigree blue Persian, was only too well aware of his superiority. At Tallows, he had enjoyed total freedom, since the estate had been big enough for him to come and go as he had pleased – would he get used to being downgraded to a mere terrace? ‘Poor puss,’ Lucy whispered. ‘But I’m here. We’ll get used to this, I promise.’

‘You’re not listening,’ Glenys accused her.

‘Sorry.’

‘He was pissed.’

‘Who was?’

‘Your husband. He was sitting outside near the conservatory, and there were quite a few empty cans on that wooden table. He was talking to himself. I saw his lips moving.’

‘I can build a wire roof over the back garden. Then at least I’ll be sure you’re safe, old lad. I know you’ve had more space, but this will turn out to be a good move, just wait and see. At least you’ll get your dinners. Just you and I, eh? The two musketeers.’

‘What?’ Sometimes, Glenys failed to hold Lucy’s attention.

‘He wouldn’t have fed Smokey,’ said Lucy. ‘And with Lizzie and the boys away for the summer, I thought I’d better have him here with me. I should have brought him with me yesterday, but I was in too much of a hurry to look for him. Alan had phoned to say he was on his way. Sorry, I wasn’t listening.’

Glenys shrugged. ‘No problem – I’m used to you. You owe me for the cat carrier – he wasn’t too happy about being shut in there, by the way. He was sitting on a gatepost – I think he was waiting for you – so he was easy to catch. I had a quick shufti down the side of the house and saw Alan in his cups. He was away with the fairies, in a right mess.’

‘Did he see you?’

Glenys chuckled. ‘The state he was in, he wouldn’t have noticed Big Ben on wheels, let alone a little fat woman with a cat carrier.’

Lucy nodded thoughtfully. ‘This is where it gets difficult, Glen. Can you write to the children? Get the letters posted in London or Birmingham or somewhere – anywhere but up here. Don’t sign. Or get a clerk to do it – you’re used to fooling people, it’s your job. Tell them Smokey’s with me, and they aren’t to worry. Don’t use your letterhead or the kids will mither you to death. I don’t want them going back to Tallows and searching for the cat.’

‘The kids are your weak spot, Lucy.’

‘I know. I sent notes to tell them I was going, but I didn’t give much of a hint as to why. I posted them to where they’re spending their summers, but I also left copies at Tallows. They say one thing and do another, these students. They could arrive home any time, so I had to cover all possibilities. It’s tricky.’

‘You really should keep your distance for months, if not years. Well, you shouldn’t – you know how I feel about that. They ought to have the complete truth, you know. He’ll fill their heads with nonsense, paint himself in shining armour and blame you for bankruptcy, abandonment, theft and just about anything short of murder. You’ll come out of it blacker than hell, while Alan’s going to—’

‘I know,’ Lucy repeated. ‘And when they’ve all finished with exams and what have you they can be shown copies of the truth if I so decide. Until then, it’s enough for them to have an absentee mother – the rest can wait. I don’t want them confused. Let them blame me for now.’

Glenys disagreed, though she had voiced her opinions too many times. The Henshaws’ offspring should be told everything right away. Even now, Lucy was placing herself on a shelf marked Unimportant, was allowing herself to wear the villain’s hat. But the urge to speak overcame Glenys yet again. ‘What if Lizzie leaves RADA to come home and look after her dad? What if Paul gives up pharmacy and Mike abandons his history degree? That husband of yours can’t even boil an egg. One or all of the kids might decide to stay at home to take care of their father.’

‘They won’t give up their education.’ Lucy placed the cat in a brand new basket bought this very afternoon from a place on St John’s Road. The shops she had discovered were brilliant, the people had been helpful, and life had worn a pretty dress today. This was a good place. It had welcomed incomers for centuries, and all were treated the same. She had been told how to get to Bootle Strand, to Sainsbury’s, to a Tesco on the Formby bypass. ‘Yer’ll be all right, queen,’ one old lady had said. ‘We’ve our fair share of criminals, like, same as everywhere else, but you’ll settle.’

‘So you’re going to live downstairs?’ Glenys asked.

‘I think so. I can let six rooms, but the boxroom’s like a big cupboard. That can be for linen – towels and sheets and so forth.’

‘Right. And you won’t go back to nursing?’

Lucy smiled and shook her head. ‘I’m hardly up to date with current practices, am I? If I returned to hospital nursing, they’d need to retrain me for years – not worth it. And I don’t think I could stand the noise. No. I’ll live and work here, and I’ll employ a couple of locals.’ A tanker was drifting into port. The new owner of Stoneyhurst stood at the window and watched the scene. ‘I’ll be fine here,’ she said. ‘When I stuck that pin into the map, God must have guided my hand. The river’s so peaceful.’

Glenys Barlow made no reply. The Mersey was a notoriously changeable body of water. It had swallowed whole houses in its time, but there was no point in mentioning that. She had done her best to persuade this client and friend to be more open about her intentions, to sue the bastard she had married, but Lucy was stubborn enough to stick to her guns. At least she held the guns, and all were fully loaded. With that, the lawyer was forced to be satisfied.

*

Lucy decided to make her apologies before chaos began. She penned notes to neighbours on both sides, informing them of her intentions and promising that noise would cease by five in the afternoon, and would not begin until after nine o’clock in the morning. Since they had raised no objections when advised by Glenys of Lucy’s plan to open a guest house, she hoped they wouldn’t be fazed by the promised disturbances, but she was determined to be polite. As an invader, she needed to be courteous.

After posting the notes, she returned to Stoneyhurst, pausing for a moment to admire the heavy front door. This was a well-built house, which description could scarcely be applied to the flimsy structures her husband had erected all over Lancashire. He was a cheat, a liar and a fraud, and she was by no means his only victim. Once his houses started to fall down, he’d be up to his neck in the smelly stuff. He would kill himself, though not quickly; he would drink until he fell into the grave.

So here she was: new beginning, clean sheet, to hell with him. Bed and breakfast was no easy option, though. Already, there were fire regulations, a possible inspection of the kitchen, and a list of dos and don’ts as long as her arm. She could do without upsetting the neighbours, and—

No sooner was she back in her own hallway than the doorbell rang. She turned, re-opened the door she had just shut behind her and found a tall, handsome man outside. Without saying a word, he grabbed her hand and pulled her down the steps. Was she being kidnapped? Was the cat shut safely in the kitchen? But no, Lucy was dragged into the house next door, so it wasn’t kidnap. At last, the man released his hold. ‘Can you deal with the top half?’ he asked breathlessly. ‘It was a pretty bad fall. I’ll get her legs. There’s nothing broken.’

A woman lay on the parquet floor. Nearby, a walking stick had fallen next to a coat stand, while slippers had clearly parted company somewhat abruptly with feet and with each other, as one was near the cane, while the second had landed against a door in the opposite wall. The woman was sweating profusely, and her spectacles, their lenses misted over, were perched at a rakish angle on her face. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I’m Moira.’

‘Louisa, but usually Lucy. I take it you’ve fallen downstairs? How many stairs?’

Moira nodded. ‘Four or five. He can’t manage me any more. Not by himself, anyway. He’s getting older and I’m getting fatter. It’s the bloody steroids.’

The he in question sighed heavily. ‘She won’t do as she’s told, I’m sad to say. She just wants to make me look a failure, don’t you? Why don’t you shout when you need help?’

Moira giggled like a child. The sound didn’t match the body on the floor, as this was a woman well into middle age, yet she acted like a young girl. Lucy thought she knew the reason. It was, she suspected, an attempt at bravery, a stab at separating the illness from the sufferer. Moira wanted to be seen as a person rather than as a bundle of cells attached to some disease, so she giggled and tried to stay young and well in her head. Sometimes, life was excessively cruel.

Between them, Lucy and the man dragged the patient to a sofa. ‘Dump her here,’ he said almost cheerfully. ‘I’ll nail her to the blessed couch – it’s the only way, I’m afraid.’ He stood back and placed a hand on the mantelpiece. ‘Lucy,’ he said, ‘thank you for the note. Feel free to make as much noise as you like, because you’ll keep this one awake during the day, then I’ll get some sleep at night.’

‘Cheeky bugger,’ said Moira. ‘It was you kept me awake when we were first married, eh? It’s the other way round these days – and no sex, Lucy. Who wants sex with a woman who’s doubly incontinent?’

The intruder felt her cheeks reddening. Scousers, she was discovering fast, were very open. They called a spade a bloody shovel, and if someone disapproved, they could dig with their bare hands. ‘I . . . er . . .’

‘Multiple sclerosis,’ said the husband. ‘I’m Richard Turner.’

‘Dr Richard Turner,’ announced his wife, who was still prone on the sofa. ‘But he can’t cure me. Can you, Rich?’

There was tension in the room, and Lucy sensed it more acutely with every passing beat of time. It was as if Moira blamed her husband for her condition, yet . . . yet there was a kind of love here. But physical love could no longer be expressed, and the woman was upset, while the man was probably frustrated.

‘Surgery and waiting room are at the other side of the hall,’ he explained. ‘I have to work from home, since Moira can’t be left to her own devices.’ He glanced at his wife. ‘You can see for yourself what happens if I close my eyes for a moment.’

‘What about your home visits?’ Lucy asked.

‘A nurse comes in sometimes to cover for me,’ he replied. ‘And we have a cleaner built like the Titanic – though I can’t imagine any self-respecting iceberg daring to confront her. She’s fierce. She’s also retiring soon, because this one has probably worn her out. Even the Titanic goes down. She was a powerful woman till she came up against my wife.’

‘Deadly,’ agreed Moira. ‘Drags me round like a piece of jetsam dumped to make room for something better. You’re not from these parts, are you?’

Lucy hesitated. ‘Lancashire,’ she said.

Moira marked the pause. Because she was confined to a wheelchair, she watched life rather more closely than most, and had become a collector of people. This woman was in trouble. She might well cause trouble too, since Richard seemed quite taken with the new neighbour. Lucy was tall, elegant and well dressed. And she tried unsuccessfully to conceal a chest that was probably magnificent. Richard was handsome, lonely and, at the moment, hormonal. After twenty-seven years of marriage, Moira knew her man well. He needed sex and was attracted to Lucy, who would be living next door. ‘Husband?’ she asked.

‘Deceased.’

The invalid noted the lie. Lucy’s eyes betrayed her, which probably meant that she was an honest woman who had been forced into a difficult position. ‘Children?’ was her next question.

‘Grown and flown.’ Lucy folded her arms. Over the years, she had been forced to become used to people staring at her upper body. She usually wore loose clothes, but this attempt at disguise could not save her from unwelcome scrutiny. Even the doctor was having trouble pretending not to look at Lucy’s 34E breasts. Well, if everyone could experience for just one day the nuisance caused by large mammaries, they’d think again. Bras needed wide straps, because narrow ones dug channels in her shoulders. She suffered backache, neck-ache and even face-ache if she tried to smile through the discomfort. Had she not feared the knife, Lucy would have got rid of her extra flesh years ago.

‘Have you registered with a GP?’ Richard asked.

‘Not yet. But I’m used to a female doctor.’

‘My partner’s a woman,’ he said. ‘Celia. She’s part time. Not a part time woman, a part time—’

‘Doctor,’ Moira chimed in.

‘Oh. Right. I’ll think about it.’ Lucy fled the scene and bolted her front door. ‘What happened there?’ she asked the cat when she reached the kitchen. The cat simply twitched his tail and began a long monologue that was probably a complaint of some kind. ‘Oh, Smokey.’ Lucy picked up the heavy animal. ‘What are we to do?’ She didn’t want a doctor so close, was worried about having a doctor at all, because they all knew each other, didn’t they? And her notes, from Bolton, would very likely say more than Lucy wanted anyone to know.

Next door, Richard Turner stood with his back to Moira and his gaze fixed on the river. He felt as guilty as sin, because he could no longer show love to the woman he had married. She had been a beautiful, tiny girl with a waist so small that his hands had spanned it. The more ill she became, the more he was forced to retreat. He could not manage to desire a person whose soiled underclothing he was sometimes forced to change. And the way she behaved was often embarrassing, as she carried on like a spoilt only child with doting parents who allowed her all her own way. Yet he did love her so much . . . Oh, what a bloody mess.

‘Richard?’

‘What?’ He didn’t turn.

‘She’s got magnificent assets.’

‘Who?’ He knew that the skin on his face had reddened.

‘Lucy.’

He lowered his head. He had loved Moira for as long as he could remember – since his teenage years. ‘Behave yourself,’ he said eventually. ‘And stop trying to find concubines for me.’ At last, he turned. ‘I love you. There’s more to life than sex.’ That was his brain speaking, but the rest of him craved . . . oh, well. Best not to think about all the other stuff. Like the warmth of a woman, the sweetness emerging from between parted lips, his hand on a breast, on a belly— ‘There’s more to life,’ he repeated.

‘There has to be,’ she replied sharply. ‘Because you can’t make love to a woman in a nappy. So how have you been managing?’

He shrugged and, as ever, was honest with her. ‘A few one-night stands with women I’ve met online. And a quick fumble with one of the temporary practice nurses – it came to nothing. But it has to be somebody for whom I only feel desire – no more than that. I can’t get involved.’

‘Why?’

He walked across the room. ‘Because you’re my wife in sickness and in health, you daft cow – it’s in the bloody contract. Because we have three children and, with luck, we’ll be grandparents in the fullness of time.’

Moira struggled to sit still. The shakes had started again, and there was no way of controlling her hands. ‘I can’t feel anything any more, Rich. Only pain, no pleasure. Even if I’m clean, it must be like making love to a side of beef. I don’t need to remind you that secondary progressive means no more remissions.’ She swallowed with difficulty. ‘You’re relatively young, and you need to sort this out, prepare for the time when I’m no longer here.’

‘Stop this. I mean it, Moira.’

She laughed. ‘Is there nothing like a pizza parlour? You know how people phone if they want food – don’t they deliver thin crust or thick crust women with or without anchovies?’

When she wasn’t being childish, she was priceless. He saw the crippled woman, heard the clever soul within. ‘With or without chips?’ he asked.

‘Without. Get a side salad. So, you want a busty woman with good legs and an undressed salad. Keep your figure, love.’

Sometimes, he needed to weep and scream. He wanted his Moira back, and he knew he would never get that. These days, she was barely capable of swallowing food, and he feared that she might choke to death. Her breathing was impaired and she couldn’t walk any distance without becoming completely exhausted or falling on the floor.

‘I’ll love you just as well if you take a mistress, Richard.’

He was definitely a